SCIENCE IN THE ENGLISH SCHOOLS. 561 



distant time be adopted by Parliament ; but in the mean while there is 

 a still more important department of teaching which is wholly neglected, 

 and concerning which the deficiencies of home instruction are at least 

 equally manifest. We refer to a proper knowledge of the influence of 

 conduct upon life. It should be the duty of every schoolmaster to try 

 and make his pupils understand how production that is to say, indus- 

 try leads to wealth ; and how destruction that is to say, idleness 

 leads to poverty. The reason why confidence in others is necessary to 

 all enterprise, and the reason why honesty, in the largest sense of the 

 word, is the only root of confidence, should in like manner be enforced 

 by precept and illustrated by example ; and such teaching, if it could 

 only be made general, would do more to heal the breach between capi- 

 tal and labor than all the panaceas of all the politicians who have ever 

 sought to figure as the "friends of the working-man." London Times. 



We print with pleasure on another page a remarkable article from 

 the Times of Monday. In itself the article may present nothing re- 

 markable to the readers of Nature, but, as the deliberate utterance of 

 the leading organ of opinion in this country, it marks a distinct stage 

 of progress toward a more enlightened conception of what constitutes 

 education. We hope that it is significant of the near approach of a 

 radical change of the conception in this country of what subjects should 

 be included in elementary education. We need not be surprised at the 

 fate of Sir John Lubbock's bill for the introduction of elementary 

 science into schools, when such erroneous conceptions of what science 

 is apparently exist in the mind of the Minister of Education in the 

 House of Commons, Lord George Hamilton. The Vice-President of 

 the Council has much to learn, when his idea of the Royal Society, one 

 of the most venerable institutions in the country, is that of a kind of 

 select Polytechnic, where " lectures " are delivered on " biology, chem- 

 istry, natural history, mechanics, astronomy, mathematics, and botany." 

 But he is new to his work, and we must hope that the debate of Thurs- 

 day last may lead him to obtain a more accurate conception of what is 

 meant by elementary science. 



Dr. Lyon Playfair, we believe, pointed out what is one of the great 

 hinderances to the introduction of science into elementary schools ; the 

 mere name, " science," frightens ministers, inspectors, school boards, 

 and teachers ; perhaps if the simpler phrase, " elementary knowledge," 

 were used, the simple-minded individuals in whose hands is the train- 

 ing of our future citizens might find that they themselves had been com- 

 pelled to become acquainted with it to their cost after they left school, 

 and that it would have been much better for them had they had some 

 little training in it before entering into the thick of the fight. 



The most notable feature in the Times article, as well as in Thurs- 



YOL. XIII. 36 



